CASTRO VALLEY, Calif.—San Francisco Bay Area residents participated in the Worldwide “Stop the War on Children” Rally on Oct. 21.
The press release for the event stated that the rally was to bring awareness to the growing need to protect and preserve the innocence of children.
Under the banner of Stop the War on Children, they protested the sexualization of children, gender transitions of minors, books with pornographic material in schools, as well as other issues.
The group of protestors was made up of parents, advocates, gay people, straight people, and people of different faiths. They rallied on the corner of Redwood Road and Castro Valley Boulevard, holding signs. Some people honked in support as they drove by.
“There’s no one born in the wrong body,” protestors shouted. They also chanted, “Leave the kids alone!”
Some participants were there to speak out against how children who might be confused in their bodies are being told they are transgender, and how parents are being told the only way forward is to affirm the child as the opposite sex or face an inevitable suicide by the child.
Some participants were there to protect safe spaces for girls and speak out against the growing trend of males competing in women’s sports and entering girls’ locker rooms.
Some protestors said they were there to stand up to the institutions who they say are stripping away the innocence of children and parental rights as seen with recent bills signed into law across many states.
Dozens of cities across the United States and Canada as well as four major cities in Germany held rallies simultaneously. Sacramento protestors rallied near Gov. Gavin Newsom’s house.
The lead sponsors of the rally were the group MOM Army and the group Gays Against Groomers. The groups Our Duty, Freedom Angels, and dozens of other organizations also helped sponsor the rally.
In a press release for the event, Seak Smith, the founder of Mom & Dad Army, stated, “As a survivor-led organization, we are alarmed at the increase in grooming and sexualization children are being subjected to by institutions we are supposed to trust, when minors are exposed to inappropriate materials in school and online, this will inevitably create easy targets for predators.”
The group Protect Kids CA was there to spread awareness about three initiatives to protect children, which they hope to get on the ballot in November 2024.
One is a School Transparency Act to notify parents if their child requests to be treated as a different gender. It requires parental consent before a school socially transitions a child.
The second is to protect girls by implementing sex-segregated school sports programs and facilities based on biological sex. The third is to prevent the sterilization of children by prohibiting puberty blockers, cross-sex hormones, genital surgeries, and mastectomies for minors.
The group stated that California registered voters are actually in strong support of these according to Rasmussen Reports, Gallup, and Harvard Harris Polls.
Erin Friday, an attorney and co-leader of the group Our Duty, shared with The Epoch Times her daughter’s story while at the rally.
Her daughter was told in her sex-ed class that one could be born in the wrong body and that one can change one’s gender, “which is just not true,” Ms. Friday said.
She said when the pandemic came along, her daughter was spending an enormous amount of time online; she was not in school; she did not have a group of friends; she was lonely and became severely depressed and anxious.
“That’s when she fell into the rabbit hole,” Ms. Friday said.
She was watching video after video telling her that she could possibly be a boy and that she would be so much happier, that all her pain would disappear, if only she transitioned.
“And it’s a big fat lie,” said Ms. Friday.
She said it’s something that they do to prey on kids; they go after the vulnerable kids and say that all their mental health issues will disappear if only they transition.
She added that with each step of transition, they tell you that you’ll get better and better.
She said they start with a social transition and move on to stopping a girl’s period with medical intervention, and then to wearing binders, and then to cross-sex hormones, and then to giving girls testosterone.
She said a girl is going to actually be rendered infertile after being given testosterone treatments, but they don’t know how many years it could take, because it’s all experimental.
Ms. Friday said that there are permanent changes with testosterone that they don’t talk about. There’s growth in the genital area that never shrinks, and there is atrophy of the uterus, which will make sex painful. There is also hair growth that never stops growing in all different parts of the body, not just the face. They will get male pattern baldness, and they will not grow their hair back.
She said these are permanent changes that a young girl will not be able to comprehend.
When girls are looking it up on the internet, the pushers of this look fantastically male, and they are told that “if you achieve that, you will have friends and everyone will love you and you will have an amazing life, and it’s just not true,” said Ms. Friday.
She talked about how healthy body parts are being removed in the name of profit, and the surgeries alone have an estimated profit of $1.5 billion in the next year or two.
“Hospitals are making gobs of money, taking advantage of vulnerable kids,” she said.
She said there was only one pediatric gender clinic in the United States in 2007, and now there are hundreds because it’s a profit center.
“This is how doctors are making money,” said Ms. Friday. “And they’re just putting these kids on a conveyor belt.”
She said if we look at the number of detransitioners by checking out the website Detrans-Reddit, she believes it went from 5,000 people two years ago to 45,000 people now.
She said that is a huge indication that there are so many young people who, as they mature, cannot understand the long-term consequences, and they have regret.
At the rally, Ms. Friday held a sign that read “Democrats Against Puberty Blockers.”
“We want to show this is a non-partisan issue; this is not a conservative issue; this is a children-safeguarding issue,” she said.
She said this is done by parents and advocates who want to safeguard the bodily integrity of children, and this is to support parents who want their children to grow up with all their healthy body parts and go through natural puberty rather than ending up lifelong medical patients.
She said that now the LGB people are trying to disentangle themselves from the T, because kids who are being told that they’re trans would just grow up to be gay. She said this is probably the most homophobic thing to tell somebody who would grow up to be a lesbian, that she’s actually a boy.
Author Amanda Kovattana, a Democrat and a lesbian from the Bay Area, told The Epoch Times that her chief focus is on the invasion of women’s spaces as well as women’s sports.
She said it’s a very strange time and that the T in LGBT is now driving the movement, and they are not altogether what they seem; it’s not simply a human rights movement.
She said that Democrats are now confused on the topic because they always stood up for LGBTQ, but now the movement has gotten too toxic.
“The lesbian, gay, bisexual people are still divided, very divided on this topic,” Ms. Kovattana said.
Ms. Kovattana said she was raised in Thailand, and as a child she was gender nonconforming, which is a person not adhering to society’s gender norms. She said that’s where she learned about the “third-gender” culture, which is when certain people see themselves or are seen by society as neither a man nor a woman. She said that’s how people in Thailand see gender nonconforming children.
She said that as souls were reincarnated from another life, they perhaps had karma from when they were the opposite sex and are now working it out by coming again in their current sex in order to learn more.
She said this is how indigenous cultures—not just in Thailand, but also the Philippines, Hawaii, and several others—view it. She said that the third-gender traditions never denied biological sex.
She said the way American trans culture has denied biological sex, has done a huge disfavor to third-gender culture.
Manny Morales, a Castro Valley resident, told The Epoch Times that the war on children is great in this country and we’re allowing it to happen right before our very eyes.
He said, “Indoctrination at public schools, grooming, sexualizing children, human trafficking, sex trafficking at our border, everything that has to do with children, this is why we’re all here.”
He said he has also been out to protest against drag queen story time at several libraries around the Bay Area.
Mr. Morales said: “Don’t be afraid to come out to a rally to speak your voice. You are a free American. This is America, land of the free, home of the brave. There’s no fear; you’re not going to get in trouble; you have every right; your First Amendment right allows you to be here. Do something; don’t just stay home and be a spectator.”
